International studio (34.1908)

Eastman Johnson


PORTRAIT OF MRS. EASTMAN JOHNSON BY EASTMAN JOHNSON

Diisseldorf, and became
thoroughly imbued with
the popular tendency of
the German school. He
conscientiously studied the
works of the great German
painters of that period—
Schadow, Lessing, Sohn
and Bendemann, and found
much to admire. Only
their sentimentalism never
appealed to him very
strongly, and although he
tried himself in that direc-
tion, as, for instance, in
The Kiss and Feeding the
Lamb, the pictures painted
under that influence do not
bear the stamp of indi-
viduality of his other work.
The by far most important
event during his stay in
Diisseldorf was his meeting
with Ludwig Knaus. His
art ideas had so much in
common with those of the
young German painter that
he was drawn to him from
the very start, and there is
no doubt that their con-
stant association as pupils
of the Academy during
those two years proved
equally beneficial and
stimulating to both.
After a two-years’ sojourn in Diisseldorf he felt
that he had learnt all he could learn there. The
trouble with the Diisseldorf School was that its
exponents were really no painters in the modern
sense of the word. They were not only deficient
in colour, but incapable of brushwork—attractive
and captivating in itself. Emanuel Leutze, in
whose atelier Johnson worked a good deal, and
who was then painting his celebrated Washington
crossing the Delaware, was in a way typical of
this school.
In search of colour and a more masterly
technique he visited London and Holland. Un-
foreseen opportunities that presented themselves to
the young painter in the latter country, induced
him to take up his domicile at the Hague and
embark on the career of a portrait painter. During
the next three years he painted the portraits of
various notables, among them the young Princess

Marie of Holland and some ladies of the Court,
also his first figure pictures, the Jeiv Boy, the Card
Players and the Savoyard. His work met with so
much approval that he was offered the position of
Court Painter; but, desirous of wider fields of
action, he proceeded to Paris in the summer of
1855, and installed himself in a studio on the
Boulevard Poissonniere.
During the fifties Delaroche and Couture
enjoyed the greatest popularity in Paris as success-
ful painters as well as teachers. The younger one,
Couture, had become world famous by his Orgie
Romaine, exhibited in the Salon of 1847, and it was
this painter’s work to which Eastman Johnson felt
himself irresistibly drawn. Couture’s choice of
subjects, half classic, half romantic in tendency,
left him rather cold ; it was the Frenchman’s
technique, so superb in breadth, so simple and
dignified, which fascinated the young American

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